Health insurance costs of high-risk employees

Companies are feeling the sting of insurance companies because they have high-risk employees that raise the health insurance premiums. It has long been known that smokers and overweight employees are increasing health insurance costs and causing them to be 2 to 3 times higher than "normal" healthcare costs. To combat the issue of higher healthcare costs, employers are now offering incentives to their employees to get them to lose weight, stop smoking, or live a healthier lifestyle. If all the high risk employees would work toward improving their health, the company's health insurance costs would drop and the company can save millions of dollars a year.

Employers pay billions of dollars for health insurance, sick leave, and lost production costs due to unhealthy employees. Smokers and overweight employees use 2-3 times the amount of sick leave as their healthy co-workers. They are twice as likely to contract illnesses and it takes their bodies a longer time to fight off the bacteria and infections.

If you company has too many high-risk employees, the health insurance company will move you into a high-risk pool. The people that are in high risk pools are those that have serious illnesses or people that use all of their health insurance benefits and still pay more money to visit the doctor. Overweight employees normally fall into a high risk pool because they are prone to a number of heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, and several other health problems. These individuals tend to visit the doctor on a frequent basis compare to the average healthy person. Smokers and drinkers also fall into the high risk pool because of liver and lung problems. Smokers can contract not only lung cancer from their habit but other cardiovascular diseases as well. Smoking can actually decrease your life expectancy by 7-20 years.

Since smoking and obesity are controllable factors, health insurance companies are trying to send a message that they are not willing to pay for all of their healthcare expenses. Unfortunately for the employer, they are normally punished more than the employees. Some employers will pass on the additional expenses to their employees that are causing the costs to increase in the first place. This is a great way to earn back some of the money your employees are costing you and it can help you reduce the amount of money you pay in healthcare costs each month.

Companies that are placed in the high risk pools will end up paying more money in premiums to cover their employee's healthcare costs. The only way to reduce the premium is to ask your employees to lose weight, give up smoking, or reduce their alcohol consumption.

Health insurance companies are willing to negotiate with employers that have found a way to convince their employees to lose weight, quit smoking, or improve their health. If you can get your obese employees to move from the category of "obese" to "overweight", you are looking at a small discount from the health insurance company.

The more employees you can get to lose weight or improve their health in some way, the lower your healthcare costs will be. Implementing a wellness program is not as difficult as you might think; in fact it is relatively easy. Assign your employees into teams and award the team with the best result a nice incentive like a day off work, a vacation, or a large cash prize. When you divide them into groups, try to make it fair for everyone. Don't place all the smokers in the same group. You may want to have 2-3 different incentives for your employees because they will all have different goals. Some will work towards weight loss, others will try to quit smoking, with others simply want to start exercising on a daily basis.